I dont know if this one has any use to anyone. When animating you character, if you have you graph editor open, leaving a footprint for you fcurves can be serve as you master undo. I found this to works well to counter the fact that you loose your single undo in layout even when you scrub you timeline to see your animation. This also counters other things like adding and deleting keys. Just as long as you have those fcurves visible in GE, you can backtrack any time.

WilliamVaughan

02-08-2003, 02:05 PM

great idea......

kevman3d

02-11-2003, 02:43 AM

Hey William,

I believe that thread started because you had some kind of 'plan for it in a couple of weeks' - Hmmm, I think its like a couple of months that have passed since that originally started! :)

Any news on your 'project'?

Though I agree - Keep this baby running, its a nice way to collect tips! :)

Here's one from me on speeding up rendering...

Switch OFF 'Ray Trace Optimisations' in the rendering panel if you really don't need it. It does tend to slow things down - Though if you have a tonne of raytraced stuff going on, it could speed up the overall time (however I've never gotten to the point where its been a blessing yet!)

Why? If you have a tonne of 3D characters, subd models, etc together in a scene, you are not using a lot of raytracing features, this option will actually SLOW your render time down by doing an 'optimising geometry' pass each frame (if you ever saw that message and wondered what it meant!)

hrgiger

02-12-2003, 03:21 PM

Another rendering tip:

If you have an obect like a table top with objects sitting on top of it, don't use one polygon for the desktop. Split the poly into several polygons. The way Lightwave renderer works is it renders the closest object to the camera (based on it's normal) first, in this case the desktop. Since you have objects sitting on the table, you don't need to render the entire desktop. You want the objects to render as much as possible first so LW doesn't waste any time rendering something you're not going to see anyway. Splittin the poly up into several will ensure that the objects will render before the whole desktop.

tonyg

02-18-2003, 10:45 AM

That's a neat one hrgiger... I guess ir might make quite a difference on really slow renders...

hrgiger

02-18-2003, 08:19 PM

It definately does. Especially for those nice slow radiosity renders.

Here's another tip here while I'm posting. This is an easy one and I'm sure most of you know this. This is more for the newbies.

When doing a radiosity rendering, you can use other lights in the scene for specularity without adding to render times. Position the light where you want your spec to be and in the light properties panel, turn off affect diffuse. This won't change the shading or lighting of your scene, but will just add specular highlights.

kevman3d

02-20-2003, 04:42 PM

Just a thought - For anyone new to these forums who are interested in a Loooooooong list of tips and tricks, then the old list is here:

http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/29193.html?1043061703

Plenty of tips on rendering, modelling, animating... Worth the wait to read! :)

mathos

07-24-2003, 07:02 AM

but too much specular. makes the scene look silly...

hrgiger

07-24-2003, 08:34 AM

Well, yes sure. But sometimes you really want a specular highlight in a certain place and it's hard to do that with any certainty without pointing a light where you want it. Having specular only lights will do that for you.

loebek

07-25-2003, 03:40 AM

im playing with an idea for a long time to set up a database with lightwave tips an tricks. the only problem is the time....but looks good in this summer...

some thougts.
-tips can be rated
-tips can be sorted with this categories:

It depends on the prupose of the pages-for who is it? For amateurs? so you should make categories like basic functions of modeler/layout...but that is sucks! You should count on just a basic knowledge of LW-so I would do it like this: Tips for :
modeling
surfacing
animating
compositing (esthetic feeling)
lighting
rendering
fx
plug-ins
misc.

riki

07-25-2003, 03:53 AM

Sounds like a good idea. maybe break it up into sections like, modeling, surfacing, Lighting, character setup, that sort of thing.